It's all about the bees!

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It’s all about the bees!

Welcome to the Durham County Beekeepers Association. We meet every third Monday of the month at 6:30pm at the Sarah P. Duke Gardens. We have an educational speaker each month and an open discussion about our experiences in beekeeping. All are welcome to participate,

Membership in the DCBA is only $10. Fill out the membership form and bring to the next meeting or mail it to the DCBA treasurer: John Cowan, 3514 Shady Creek Drive, Durham, NC 27713

At this meeting we will elect the officers and executive committee members for 2017 and will plan for next year.

We meet every third Monday of the month at this location. Everyone is welcome!Note: Our own Donna Devanney will raffle off bee equipment at this meeting with proceeds donated to DCBA! Please bring cash or check.

Swarms are often mistakenly reported when none is present. Our swarm extractors move quickly to retrieve honey bee swarms, and it is important that they not waste their time. Honey bees don’t wait around for us, and we miss an opportunity to catch a real swarm while chasing misreported swarms. For retrievable swarms, a DCBA member will come and extract the swarm ASAP. When you call/email, the following information will be very helpful:

Have you found a stationary cluster of thousands of bees?

Are they reachable?

Will a ladder be needed? How tall?

Are they on a tree limb or pole that can be cut or shaken, or are they on/inside something immovable and require a bee vacuum?

Identifying a Honey Bee

Flying insects can be difficult to identify if they refuse to stop buzzing around our heads. The key attributes to look for when discerning a bee from a wasp is fuzzy vs shiny.

Honey bees are fuzzy, as all cute animals should be.

Wasps are bald and shiny. Also they are skinny, and have a more pronounced “wasp waist”.

Identifying a Honey Bee Swarm

The word “swarm” if often used to describe just any large population of insects on the move, but its meaning is much more specific when speaking of Honey Bees. A swarm is not merely a lot of bees flying around, though you may see many bees flying around the swarm. The swarm is actually a relatively calm cluster of bees perched on some surface. A bee ball, as it were.